"London's new drinking and dining lifestyle is the Madame Tussauds and The London Dungeon of the AirBnB demographic. Nobody within any real community will ever interact with it."

And while the first bit might be kind of true, I'm not sure about the second. Firstly, what's a 'real community'? And secondly, the 'newcomers' and those he identifies as gentrifiers are typically much more economically active within their local area, both spending money, investing money and establishing businesses.

I also like how his cut off for anything being real and genuine seems to be the exact point at which he grew up. I'm sure there were plenty of people in and from Brixton complaining about what it was turning into when he was growing up and going there.

Is that folk will go once or twice while they're still being talked about, then move onto the next cutting-edge place. They're not given the chance to establish any kind of community, much less bring different groups of people together - if there is one, it's just the type of people who have to be the first to check out the trendiest places. Even if the business lasts, people will tire of the 'gimmick' quite quickly to make it a regular haunt, and it'll continue as a once-or-twice novelty.

Frank's looked a little like Light Bar 7 years ago as far the crowd went. Generally it's pretty exciting some of the things going on in the area but I fear it will just be Hackney in 5 years. They've just opened a new record shop called Rye Wax though who is run by a friend of mine who has lived that way for years.

Peckham Pelican, the Montpelier, the Victoria, the Gowlett, the Rye are all good pubs. Peckham Springs, Bar Story, Four Quarters, Frank's are good bars, and then there's Canavan's for TOP late-night dancing and pool shenanigans, or the Bussey Building if you want a proper boogie.

how the hell have they got is SO RIGHT?? don't understand. bar the one time i went in on its first week of opening, it's been completely rammed. must be doing amazing business. i still have some quarters in my wallet to use in the point blank machine actually!!

"This sign in particular worried me. I have no objections to people serving good coffee in a working-class area, but this fucking picture is evidence of something more troubling: Bespectacled, moustachioed, overtly Caucasian, this is a beacon to the imminent Deptford emigres. "Come inside, white people," it says."

More of a Nags Head man. I know there are still plenty of pubs at the Archway end that would be described by you lot as 'dodgy' though (in fact Theo did just that in that elitist thread about 'dodgy' pubs the other day).

Archway and Highbury ends of Hollway road have posh coffee shops. They've got that artisanal chicken shop up the road as well. Nags head is still reminiscent of Camden high street circa 2001 though. Keeping the dream alive. Never change Holloway, I love you.

The shopping centre was a start of sorts, all those flowers and such down the centre of the road. The new Student blocks they're putting in, the Coronet Wetherspoons replacing decades of dingy pool hall with stink of piss out the front... Plus James Selby eschewing grammar and calling itself 'Selbys' and putting a Nero in.

Socieconomic segregation has always happened, but it's accelerating and when it's combined with the discourse around benefits scroungers and public sector cuts it really does enforce the idea that Everyone Hates Each Other

"Other than the fact it looked like a 70s council flat, the only real nod to the job centre inside was this: the Jobs Board. From a distance, I had a pang of horror, dreading that it might be a menu, with pulled pork and macaroni cheese advertised like they were casual labour vacancies. If that was the case, I was going to have to break all journalistic codes and practices and start shanking someone with a bottle of Brooklyn Lager."

not as one-sided as it could have been, feel like it properly captures the atmosphere of zone 2 London as it is today, for better and for worse. He writes with a lot of flair and feeling about London (who gives a shit if he's from Kingston, really) - this article and the one about the London suburbs from a few months ago are both really powerful bits of short writing about the city. Hope he ends up as an Iain Sinclair type (as opposed to writing for the Mail, as someone half-joked up there ^^)

I live in Kilburn at the moment and it always strikes me as weird how this part of London doesn't seem to be gentrifying much, even though bits similarly far from the centre in the rest of London are. Obviously West Hampstead is close by and that's well gentrified, but from what I gather that's always been upmarket by virtue of its proximity and association with full-on Hampstead. Zadie Smith described this part of London as "ungentrified, ungentrifiable" in NW (which also contains some terrific writing on 21st century London) and it does seem that way a bit.

I.e the total shit-house pub in the OP's article is at the end of my street and has magically opened again for the start of the season, which leads me to believe it's basically only open for Millwall heavies